1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a method for creating a customized TV/radio service from user-selected contents and playback device using the same, and more particularly to a method for automatically creating a playlist for user-selected contents with inserted advertisements and playback device using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are several forms of digital streaming content available to consumers today. The most common forms are digital television, digital radio, or streaming Internet radio. Each of these includes some form of metadata to identify the content currently being transmitted. This may give the name and description of the show (for digital TV content or for talk radio shows) or the artist and title of a song (in the case of music radio).
Receivers may present this information to the user, but it is rarely used for other purposes. In some digital TV systems, this is used to offer recommendations to users or to schedule automatic recordings on a personal video recorder (PVR) device, but it is otherwise usually only for consumption by the user. In an Internet radio scenario, this metadata is only available after the song or show has started playing.
Many PVR products currently exist that will automatically record television shows that may be of interest to a viewer, based on explicit preferences and viewer behavior, for example the Tivo, Replay TV, and Sky+ services. At present, however, users are limited to watching content one item at a time and must manually select the next item to watch. While this is acceptable for 30-minute TV shows, it is not acceptable for 3-4 minute songs.
From the broadcaster's perspective, there is another problem with this model of watching television. The user will only see those advertisements that occur in ad breaks within the show (and may not see those due to ad-skipping functionality in some PVR devices). Advertisements shown between shows will usually not be recorded and so viewers using PVR devices will not see them. This may lead to decreased ad revenues as more users by PVR systems and thus fewer viewers watch advertisements between shows, reducing the amount that broadcasters can charge for those ad slots.